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Xfce Getting a New Version Soon
jones_supa writes It looks like the release of Xfce 4.12 is finally about to materialize. It has been about two and half years since the last stable release. There is now a concerted effort underway to ship a new release of this lightweight GTK+2 desktop environment out around the end of February or early March. "As we have discussed the status and progress of core components with many of you individually, we feel confident that the state of Xfce is good enough to polish some final edges and push more translations until then," wrote Simon Steinbeiß on the xfce4-dev mailing list. The official list of showstopper bugs does not look too bad either. However, looking at the long time between releases certainly makes one think if the project could have use for some extra resources.
I thought gtk2 was deprecated. Why don't they use gtk3? It's been stable for four years now.
I don't want to come off as too negative, but let's be realistic/objective as a tech community. Does this release really matter? I doubt! In my last 7 years supporting schools and small businesses, I have seen several KDE and GNOME desktops. I have come across zero XFCE installations!
I guess slashdotters can tell me where XFCE is making a difference. Does such a place exist?
All you have to do is not suck. Just don't completely fuck this up like gnome and ubuntu did and you'll be fine.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I'll let some pictures show why GTK+3 is an abomination.
This is a GTK+ 2 UI: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Gedit2261.png
This is the GTK+ 3 UI of a later version of the same application: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Gedit_3.11.92.png
The GTK+ 2 UI is a good one. It follows widely-used conventions, with toolbars containing frequently-used functionality (with relevant icons and descriptive text), and menus containing additional functionality that may not be used as often. This results in an application that's easy to use.
The GTK+ 3 UI is an awful one. There's no consistency. It's difficult to tell what's a button that results in an immediate action, and that is merely a menu. The icons don't describe the corresponding action. The application is nearly impossible to use.
Going from GTK+ 2 to GTK+ 3 was a total regression for gedit. Its UI was trashed, rendering it unusable. I sure hope that the Xfce developers don't make the same mistake.
xfce devs refuse to recognize things like this as a problem. Fuck those idiots and fuck xfce. Should have just let it die.
Resources for what? What exactly is the problem that requires 'extra resources' and how do more frequent releases of a desktop environment benefit anyone?
all I need for a windows manager is extreme stability, low footprint, a slick way to organize menues, the ability to configure and independence of as many other components as possible. No gimmicks like fullscreen modus if a window is moved to the bottom. Light weight windows managers fullfill all this already nicely. I still use blackbox and have essentially not changed my setup since 15 years. Its all I ever need. fluxbox, xfce are very similar and would work for me too. Nice to have one text file .blackboxmenu which gives the menu and one file .blackboxrc which controls the features. There is nothing to learn about it
except that right clicking anywhere on the desktop produces the menu. Also nice, the finder in OSX can be configured so that the workflow is essentially identical on both platforms (the doc is the essential difference). But its important for the workflow to not lose fractions of seconds here and there due to poor or `clever' interface design or when moving from one operating system to an other.The problem of designing a good user interface on the desktop is solved and its based on KISS.
On the phone it took longer.
Well, xfce is very usable.
I dual boot MX-14, a nice distro based on Mepis, Anti-X with a great community.
It is on top of Debian stable, so it is like a rock with the rough edges smoothed to a nice shine.
I dual boot with the aging Mepis 12 beta, KDE 4.3, still works great despite no further development. Warren's betas a s goos as many distro's final releases. (looking at you Ubuntu !)
They both seem to be on the same side.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
User defined launchers (apps, locations, folders) and user configurable docking panels were standard until Gnome 3. Even the "Classic" Gnome that came with Ubuntu 12.04 allowed launchers with a bit of scripting. But the newest Gnome requires detailed .desktop file fiddling to set up launchers.
Xfce permits user defined launchers with a right-click on the desktop. And docking panels for those launchers are easily configurable.
Unity and Gnome take away the simple usability features that make a desktop efficient. I understad why Unity is doing this. Their vision is to be one desktop for PCs and mobile devices. Everything has to work from menus on a small screen. It's harder to understand why Gnome is following along without even the option of launchers and panels on a PC.
Bottom line is that Xfce works and improves usability of the desktop. That's all I can ask.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I really miss ion3. Awesome WM is ... awesome, but not quite what I need. wmii don't feel right as well.
at least on Linux MInt. I've been using Mint for about 8 years now and I always end up going back with XFCE when Gnone, Mate, Cinnamon end up having weird usability issues and glitches.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I haven't really found any advantages to using XFCE in the post-512MB RAM era.
Back in the Gnome2 days, Gnome was pretty much just as fast as XFCE, looked better, and it handled hot-plugging monitors or un/docking your computer correctly. XFCE didn't.
This hasn't changed a bit to this day. Gnome3 and MATE handle the plugging thing correctly and look good. MATE and XFCE are good desktops in the classic sense. MATE and XFCE are fast and give you good battery life on Linux.
The only thing in the intersection is still MATE/Gnome2. So why again is everyone out there dissatisfied with Gnome 3 or Unity using XFCE these days? Do you never dock your laptop? Always blind-type something with xrandr (I did at some point, but then the distros I used had MATE, so I switched "back")?
Does anybody, still around, remembers when on slashdot were post announcements instead of announcements of future announcements ?
I have read the same complaint from others.
On the other hand, some CentOS users say XFCE4 works fine them on CentOS 7.
Everything worked for me on CentOS 6.5.
I have it on all my computers that run Linux and need a GUI. It could be making a bit more work of drag-and-drop in its own elements (panels etc) though.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Thank you for giving me an escape route from the madness of Gnome 3, Unity and all other hideous desktops like them.
Thank you.
systemd
Can we at least get an optional, properly functioning, vsync'ed, tear-free compositor built in to XFCE sometime before the decade is out? That's probably the only reason I don't use XFCE instead of something like KDE or Cinnamon. KDE, Cinnamon, and even the abomination (Gnome 3) have all solved the screen tear problem, but not XFCE.
Yes, I know XFCE is supposed to be lightweight, but that's why the compositor can be turned off by default or even included as an additional (but officially supported) XFCE package.
And before someone says something like "Just use Compton", I've found that adding a separate compositor on top of XFCE doesn't always work properly depending on the hardware setup, and even then, effectiveness at reducing screen tear can be hit or miss. Having one package explicitly designed to work with XFCE, or even baked right in, would help immensely.
Of course, this is probably all moot, because as far as I know, the transistion from X to Wayland should take care of screen tear automatically. Whether XFCE will be able to make the jump to Wayland with their development pace is another story entirely.
You know how you change peoples' paradigms? You give them back ten pennies....
Just use FLWM based on FLTK and get out of your own way.
RAM isn't the problem. It's straight IOPS which are in the CPU's realm. If it is busy making sure my tooltips are fading, my menus sliding, and the glass is sparkling, then it isn't computing my instructions.
Those damned POS walmart computers are still garbage! I bought (second-hand) an HP DV2000 which has the AMD E2 APU. It is little more than an overgrown cellphone. That CPU is ALWAYS the chokepoint and only overclocking it has made it bearable. And bearable is meant in this case in its most loose interpretation.
Use KDE or GNOME. That's what Real Men use. Imagine the Marlboro Man or Joe Camel. The Marlboro Man uses GNOME, and Joe Camel uses KDE.
That's so obviously false. Because if Joe Camel used KDE, he would spell his name Joe Kamel.
Is Cinnamon synonymous w/ GNOME shell? I've used both GNOME3 and GNOME shell - it's a distinction w/o a difference. Main thing I've noticed about this is that one is best off having as many virtual desktops as the applications that one simultaneously runs. Like I run Thunderbird, Chromium & FireFox (due to the number of websites, I find it more handy to have 2 different browsers handle them, not to mention that some sites are better optimized for one than the other), and so I keep 3 virtual desktops handy, and run each of them in a separate desktop.
I always load up XFCE whenever . Simple, uncluttered and fast.
... as dozens of comments above. Xfce on my main box at work (I'm actually typing this on my Mint/Mate laptop): for people who have a real job and just need a functional computer. This said, most of the time my entire screen contains 3-4 bash shells (and a browser, and possibly Emacs), so ok, perhaps I'm not a typical desktop user.